Part 8 (1/2)

[Footnote 237: _Ibid._, ii., 2930.]

[Footnote 238: _Ibid._, ii., 2632, 3008; _Monumenta Habsburgica_, ii., 37.]

[Footnote 239: _L. and P._, ii., 3076, 3077, 3081.]

[Footnote 240: _L. and P._, ii., 3402, 3439-41.]

[Footnote 241: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 918; _L. and P._, ii., 3455, 3462.]

All this riot of wealth would no doubt impress the impecunious Charles. In September he landed in Spain, so dest.i.tute that he was glad to accept the offer of a hobby from the English amba.s.sador.[242]

At the first meeting of his Cortes, they demanded that he should marry at once, and not wait for Francis's daughter; the bride his subjects desired was the daughter of the King of Portugal.[243] They were no more willing to part with Navarre; and Charles was forced to make to Francis the feeble excuse that he was not aware, when he was in the Netherlands, of his true t.i.tle to Navarre, but had learnt it since his arrival in Spain; he also declined the personal interview to which Francis invited him.[244] A rupture between Francis and Charles was only a question of time; and, to prepare for it, both were anxious (p. 097) for England's alliance. Throughout the autumn of 1517 and spring of 1518, France and England were feeling their way towards friends.h.i.+p.

Albany had left Scotland, so that source of irritation was gone. Henry had now a daughter, Mary, and Francis a son. ”I will unite them,” said Wolsey;[245] and in October, 1518, not only was a treaty of marriage and alliance signed between England and France, but a general peace for Europe. Leo X. sent Campeggio with blessings of peace from the Vicar of Christ, though he was kept chafing at Calais for three months, till he could bring with him Leo's appointment of Wolsey as legate and the deposition of Wolsey's enemy, Hadrian, from the Bishopric of Bath and Wells.[246] The ceremonies exceeded in splendour even those of the year before. They included, says Giustinian, a ”most sumptuous supper” at Wolsey's house, ”the like of which, I fancy, was never given by Cleopatra or Caligula; the whole banqueting hall being so decorated with huge vases of gold and silver, that I fancied myself in the tower of Chosroes,[247] when that monarch caused Divine honours to be paid him. After supper... twelve male and twelve female dancers made their appearance in the richest and most sumptuous array possible, being all dressed alike.... They were disguised in one suit of fine green satin, all over covered with cloth of gold, undertied together with laces of gold, and had masking hoods on their heads; the ladies had tires made of braids of damask gold, with long hairs of white gold. All these maskers danced at one time, and after they had danced they put off their visors, and then they were all known.... The (p. 098) two leaders were the King and the Queen Dowager of France, and all the others were lords and ladies.”[248] These festivities were followed by the formal ratification of peace.[249] Approval of it was general, and the old councillors who had been alienated by Wolsey's Milan expedition, hastened to applaud. ”It was the best deed,” wrote Fox to Wolsey, ”that ever was done for England, and, next to the King, the praise of it is due to you.”[250] Once more the wheel had come round, and the stone of Sisyphus was lodged more secure than before some way up the side of the hill.

[Footnote 242: _L. and P._, ii., 3705.]

[Footnote 243: _Ibid._, ii., 4022.]

[Footnote 244: _Ibid._, ii., 4164, 4188.]

[Footnote 245: _L. and P._, ii., 4047.]

[Footnote 246: _Ibid._, ii., 4348.]

[Footnote 247: Chosroes I. (Nus.h.i.+rvan) of Persia.]

[Footnote 248: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1085, 1088; _cf._ Shakespeare, _Henry VIII_.]

[Footnote 249: _L. and P._, ii., 4468, 4483, 4564, 4669.]

[Footnote 250: _Ibid._, ii., 4540.]

This general peace, which closed the wars begun ten years before by the League of Cambrai, was not entirely due to a universal desire to beat swords into ploughshares or to even turn them against the Turk.

That was the everlasting pretence, but eighteen months before, Maximilian had suffered a stroke of apoplexy; men, said Giustinian, commenting on the fact, did not usually survive such strokes a year, and rivals were preparing to enter the lists for the Empire.

Maximilian himself, faithful to the end to his guiding principle, found a last inspiration in the idea of disposing of his succession for ready money. He was writing to Charles that it was useless to expect the Empire unless he would spend at least as much as the French.[251] ”It would be lamentable,” he said, ”if we should now lose all through some pitiful omission or penurious neglect;” and Francis was ”going about covertly and laying many baits,”[252] to attain (p. 099) the imperial crown. To Henry himself Maximilian had more than once offered the prize, and Pace had declared that the offer was only another design for extracting Henry's gold ”for the electors would never allow the crown to go out of their nation”.[253] The Emperor had first proposed it while serving under Henry's banners in France.[254]

He renewed the suggestion in 1516, inviting Henry to meet him at Coire. The brothers in arms were thence to cross the Alps to Milan, where the Emperor would invest the English King with the duchy; he would then take him on to Rome, resign the Empire himself, and have Henry crowned. Not that Maximilian desired to forsake all earthly authority; he sought to combine a spiritual with a temporal glory; he was to lay down the imperial crown and place on his brows the papal tiara.[255] Nothing was too fantastic for the Emperor Maximilian; the man who could not wrest a few towns from Venice was always deluding himself with the hope of leading victorious hosts to the seat of the Turkish Empire and the Holy City of Christendom; the sovereign whose main incentive in life was gold, informed his daughter that he intended to get himself canonised, and that after his death she would have to adore him. He died at Welz on 12th January, 1519, neither Pope nor saint, with Jerusalem still in the hands of the Turk, and the succession to the Empire still undecided.

[Footnote 251: _Ibid._, ii., 4172.]

[Footnote 252: _L. and P._, ii., 4159.]

[Footnote 253: _Ibid._, ii., 1923.]

[Footnote 254: _Ibid._, ii., 1398, 1878, 1902, 2218, 2911, 4257.]

[Footnote 255: _Cf._ W. Boehm, _Hat Kaiser Maximilian I. im Jahre 1511 Papst werden wollen?_ 1873.]

The contest now broke out in earnest, and the electors prepared (p. 100) to garner their harvest of gold. The price of a vote was a hundredfold more than the most corrupt parliamentary elector could conceive in his wildest dreams of avarice. There were only seven electors and the prize was the greatest on earth. Francis I. said he was ready to spend 3,000,000 crowns, and Charles could not afford to lag far behind.[256]

The Margrave of Brandenburg, ”the father of all greediness,” as the Austrians called him, was particularly influential because his brother, the Archbishop of Mainz, was also an elector and he required an especially exorbitant bribe. He was ambitious as well as covetous, and the rivals endeavoured to satisfy his ambitions with matrimonial prizes. He was promised Ferdinand's widow, Germaine de Foix; Francis sought to parry this blow by offering to the Margrave's son the French Princess Renee; Charles bid higher by offering his sister Catherine.[257]